1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for indicating consumer demand, and more specifically, to a method enabling a customer to communicate with a business regarding a product of interest.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
In today's just-in-time marketplace, satisfying consumer demands for products and information in a timely manner is important to making a sale. Missing an opportunity to provide helpful information or a desirable product to the consumer can lead to lost sales.
The ability to keep the customer interested in the product is just as important as having the item available. Thus, stock information may be helpful to a business seeking to satisfy the consumers desire for information. However, providing the information typically requires employees to service the consumer demands. Employees can be expensive and unreliable. In addition, the quality of the employee's knowledge may not be measurable, resulting in unpredictable performance.
The customer who is able to wander through a store without being serviced by an employee may be more inclined to abandon the store without making a purchase and seek the product elsewhere. This can also lead to future lost sales where, for example, the consumer seeks future products from competitors.
One purposed method is the use of suggestion boxes where consumers can comment on the business. However, suggestion boxes rely on the selflessness of the customer and may not enable a customers to ask the question they want to in order to make the desired purchase.
Customer service counters are another example of a prior art method of servicing customers, however in order to do so, the customer needs to interrupt their activity, determine the position of the customer service counter, and wait on a line. Often customers are not willing to go through these steps to answer a question. By the time the consumer has finished shopping, they have forgotten their question or simply lost interest.
A customer shopping in a given store can call the business using a cell phone and ask a question. This approach fails because stores may not be equipped to handle questions about products which are local in nature from outside phone calls; further the phone call may need to be relayed to the appropriate department before a product specific question can be answered. Such phones call may not provide the business with the specific product identification needed to answer the consumer's question. Therefore, a need exists for a method of servicing a customer with information and/or products in a timely fashion.